and rather than guess the influence of that, I think it fairest to exclude those two days and add up the 5 days of the past week where the major downtime was not happening, (though on doing so, it's clear the site's downtime also resulted in a slow return to normal afterwards), which results in in a daily average games volume for the past week, of:

168,515

(if I'd divided by 4 instead, and excluded the slow return of players the day after the site downtime was fixed, the daily average for the past week would be: 176,181 games/day

At this point, I'd tentatively conclude the membership went into 'shock' for the week of March 3rd to 10th and refrained from playing much as they figured out how to adjust to the new playing terms on site and gave up old habits. See also my topic: managing your cubits wisely on chesscube, at http://www.chesscube.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=5068&p=33748#p33748

and rather than guess the influence of that, I think it fairest to exclude those two days and add up the 5 days of the past week where the major downtime was not happening, (though on doing so, it's clear the site's downtime also resulted in a slow return to normal afterwards), which results in in a daily average games volume for the past week, of:

This clearly is a drop from the previous week, and of the average daily games played for the past eleven months (ending Feb. 28th, 2013) of about 198,600. That's a decline of around 21%.

I think by now we've seen the bulk of any 'mass exodus' of those who had low cubits' balances and could not readily figure out how to play for free as much as they wanted here. Some short term loss in membership was to be expected and I for one am a bit relieved that we seemed to have retained 80% of the membership (or at least, 80% of the daily games volume remains), weeks after the massive change from wagering towards 'paying' to play (with a chance at a prize that often was not as much as we'd paid), earlier in this month.

On a related note, one cc staffer was overheard remarking today that since the change, the site revenue is up 300-350% (I'd estimated the change should lead to at least a 400% increase in revenue but even so, that's still good going especially since we appear to be retaining about 80% of the site's playing activity].

A hazard in driving away too many of those who are not paying is that those who do pay and play here then find it slower going (perhaps much slower going) to find opponents, and the site becomes generally less interesting overall (case in point: ICC, though they do have a short one-time free trial period, I find that site is now incredibly sterile and unfriendly).

Hence most chess sites are designed to have a sizeable free or longish 'trial period' membership component [here, it's a combination of reduced services plus VIP periods of full service earned through XP levels], which I'm all in favour of (as I'm confident that's an excellent way to 'sell' a service to customers, also known as 'the puppy dog' approach in sales). I mean, who's going to return a puppy once they've had a chance to get to know it well?

(this does not allow for the two days in March with major downtime and mostly tourney server only games, I don't think it fair to exclude those for monthly calculations, because it's been a rare month this past year when the site has not experienced periods of downtime, though those this past month were somewhat more than usual)

It's looking to me like the changeover to much higher charges for regular games has reduced the site games activity by 20 to 25% (that is, the community appears to have survived the transition reasonably intact). I'm guessing that's due to losing players who either cannot figure out how to play here as much as they like for free (and yes, that may require patience at first especially for newcomers), or in the absence of figuring that out, became willing to buy cubits and/or subscribe to VIP membership. Hopefully the now much higher revenue will not only pay for existing expenses but someday lead to a net income that will pay for: improved site stability (avoiding much of the server down periods), fix up some glitches, add a few much requested features and allow a budget for site management.

Not quite all game prices are higher cost, eg. I've come to stick with 15 & 200 cubit games [and the 200c ones just now have an attractive payout of 360 to 378 cubits, if you're VIP, you're only paying 185c so you're fully doubling your cubits on winning], depending on whether I'm after strong opponents and ready to lose a lot of those games, or, simply want to gain lots of cubits by playing weaker opponents (aka 'bunnysniping'). Anticipating that the 200c bargain prize deal games won't last forever, I've been switching to longer games when facing stronger opponents and likely losing. For me that means mostly 5/0 instead of 2/0 & 3/0, and plan to start get used to 10/0 pretty soon, (which should be better for my serious chess anyway).

(this does not allow for the two days in March with major downtime and mostly tourney server only games, I don't think it fair to exclude those for monthly calculations, because it's been a rare month this past year when the site has not experienced periods of downtime, though those this past month were somewhat more than usual)

Not enough of a drop to be significant imo, but the monthly stats for games/day are worth watching nonetheless over the coming months.

I think restoring / boosting membership would be a useful objective. SUGGESTION: alter the pitiful referral bonus (from 5% of only the first transaction, which is likely to be tentative and minimal such as merely one month's VIP membership), to 50% of the first transaction, or, 10% of the first year's transactions).

Not enough of a drop to be significant imo, but the monthly stats for games/day are worth watching nonetheless over the coming months.

I think restoring / boosting membership would be a useful objective. SUGGESTION: alter the pitiful referral bonus (from 5% of only the first transaction, which is likely to be tentative and minimal such as merely one month's VIP membership), to 50% of the first transaction, or, 10% of the first year's transactions).

A confirmation that the site's games volume since the major price increases has decreased about 25%, but the good news is that the site's games volume appears reasonably stable. Much better news would be an increase in games volume.

Clearly a drop when there might be an expectation of a recovery / increase. But then there have been many price increases and prize drops the past couple of months for regular events. Anyway, the drop in playing volume is somewhat disconcerting.